Hi, and welcome back to

your Daily Mindfulness.

In today's session, we're going

to talk about doing nothing.

There's a Japanese word called

boketto, which means to gaze

vacantly into the distance without

thinking about anything specific.

I've been increasingly interested

in the value of doing nothing.

And not the meditation kind of

doing nothing, but the staring

at a tree, letting the mind

go wherever kind of nothing.

No agenda, no trying to be

aware, just letting your mind

do whatever it wants to do.

There's something deeply restorative and

healing about this for the nervous system.

It gives us a chance to, to

recalibrate, to let the snow in

a metaphorical snow globe settle.

And sometimes redirecting the mind can

be a subtle form of oppression against

the part of you that actually needs

to be scattered and constraintless.

So there's a balance here between

meditation and time for no meditation.

Uh, buketto feels similar to the

concept of useless window gazing,

which I've talked about in the past,

where you just let yourself stare

out of a window without any agenda.

So a simple suggestion for integrating

the potential nourishing benefits of this

into a meditation practice is just to

simply spend the first few minutes of your

practice, letting the mind do whatever.

You know, we, we kind of do this already.

Just taking the mind to settle, take a few

deep breaths, relaxing into being present.

And you should notice that there's,

there's something settling about

creating a supportive and encouraging

container for this, similar to placing

a snow globe on a stable surface.

Things finally have the chance to

settle and that lack of agitation from

doing nothing allows whatever internal

agitation that is present to sort of

run its course and to reintegrate.

And then, and this is where I see a

lot of value, once the snow has settled

a bit, the thoughts, the energy, the

emotions, we often notice that the mind

is more inclined to collect itself on one

point, such as the breath or to simply

be more tuned to what is happening.

It's almost as if it needs

permission to do what it wants

first, before it will collect itself.

So the less force you can bring to the

cultivation of presence, the better.

And I hope you can take this into your

consideration and, uh, give yourself

some space to truly do nothing or

put differently, to allow your mind

to do everything, whatever it wants.

So this is buketto.

Try to integrate it into your day in a

way that feels meaningful, especially

if you feel called to explore this.

It could just be a few seconds, could be

a few minutes and it could just be at the

beginning of your meditation practice.

Thank you for your practice

and let's settle in.